


decline? oh god, i practically invented decline

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Retail, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 15:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13238889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: Gansey wears a suit to the interview, and that plus a winning smile smooths over his complete lack of retail experience. It's the closest he's come to feeling like things are going to be all right since he handed over the keys to the Pig. His manager him a list of the most common produce codes, which he memorizes, and a book for the less common ones. It seems like a lot of work for the pittance they're offering him, but he's willing to concede that he might be out of touch with the financial realities of the lower class. He orders two polyester shirts in a shade the catalogue calls espresso even though it's closer to mud, and he has to wash them three times each before he stops getting hives on the back of his neck. (Laundry, at least, is easy on the other side of a WikiHow article.)





	decline? oh god, i practically invented decline

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this post](https://declanapologist.tumblr.com/post/168699200294/retail-gansey-follow-up-hes-supposed-to-make).
> 
> world-building assumptions: instead of moving to henrietta, gansey investigated what seemed to be an equally valid possibility somewhere else (so the prep school mentioned isn't aglionby, which ronan still went to and dropped out of)
> 
> thanks to [kenopsia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia) for encouraging this nonsense!

When the dust settles and they can see what's left, Helen says, "Well, looks like you'll be getting that gap year after all." Which strikes Gansey as unnecessarily cruel, considering that they're in the exact same situation except that he's several months short of a diploma from a high school he's still attending only because of a draconian refund policy, and she has a political science degree from an Ivy. So they're not in the same situation at all, really, except for a general sense of indignity.

It turns out all those years of networking were for naught because misfortune has rendered them radioactive. Men Gansey has been golfing with practically since he was born won't return his calls. When he does finally manage to get one of his contacts to give him the time of day, which involves the polite, dignified version of camping out in his driveway, all he walks away with is a chance to be a cashier at one of his grocery stores.

Gansey wears a suit to the interview, and that plus a winning smile smooths over his complete lack of relevant experience. It's the closest he's come to feeling like things are going to be all right since he handed over the keys to the Pig. His manager gives him a list of the most common produce codes, which he memorizes, and a book for the less common ones. It seems like a lot of work for the pittance they're offering him, but he's willing to concede that he might be out of touch with the financial realities of the lower class. He orders two polyester shirts in a shade the catalogue calls espresso even though it's closer to mud, and he has to wash them three times each before he stops getting hives on the back of his neck. (Laundry, at least, is easy on the other side of a WikiHow article.) But it's fine. He has his flaws just like anyone else, but whininess isn't one of them. The person who trains him is impressed by how quickly he picks up on the register controls, which allows him to puff back up slightly, even if it does seem exceedingly grim. It isn't exactly a  _challenge_.

On day six, Gansey is doing some deep breathing to get over the indignity of having been told, while looking for the sticker on a Bartlett, "Oh, that's a pear!" in a weirdly generous, slightly pitying tone. He's almost entirely sure he's becoming the subject of a customer complaint because apparently something about either his response ( _I'm aware, I assure you_ ) or his general demeanor was unacceptably arrogant. No one has ever assumed he's stupid before.

When he looks up from his very slightly shaking hands, there's a man looming ominously over his register. He's wearing a thick-strapped tank top even though the morning, or the brief part of it Gansey got to experience before clocking in, was the sort of brisk one that means fall is fading into winter. He looks like he might steal something. "Are you gonna be done freaking out any time soon?" He jerks a thumb at the overfilled cart behind him. 

They make eye contact, and Gansey realizes that they're probably about the same age, the other boy artificially matured by severe cheekbones and a look of fury that seems disproportionate to the act of grocery shopping, exhausting as it is. Gansey's smile slipped into something closer to a grimace by hour two, but now it feels revitalized, if only slightly. 

The boy doesn't smile back, which is  _fine_ , honestly, if a bit impolite. It's not like Gansey thinks he's at his most attractive wearing a store-issued polo with a dark spot on the front from where he held a customer's sopping wet bag of apples to his face to look for the code. (His second-to-last contact blinked itself out of his eye during his interview, and his glasses are nearly unusable from him leaving them face-down on his dashboard, on the floor by his bed, on dark forest paths.) He doesn't take it personally or anything, but his smile does dim a bit. "Do you have a rewards card with us?"

The boy doesn't look up from the leather cuff on his left wrist, which he's plucking with his identically-adorned right hand. "Yeah," he says, and then nothing else. Gansey gives it a moment—he doesn't want to rush customers, or be presumptuous, even though it seems to him that a little efficiency isn't too much to ask. He rings out a few items—frozen pizza, frozen pizza, a single yam—and then offers to enter a phone number.

Gansey has learned that there are really only two ways people give their numbers. There's the rushed delivery—all in one breath and usually with no warning, as in  _Q: Hi, how are you? A:_ _202_ _-856..._  And then there's remedial numerics, which is approximately one digit per minute while they watch to make sure he hasn't suddenly forgotten to use a keypad. The boy, who seems to have completely lost interest in unloading his cart, recites his slowly, but not like he thinks Gansey is too dim to record it. He utters each digit like he's hoping the earth will open up and swallow him whole before he has to give the next. Gansey keys it in obligingly; the theatrics and the cart piled high are discouraging people from lining up behind him, which is just fine.

"Declan?" he asks.

"Fucking  _no_. That's my brother." He says  _brother_ like he means  _asshole_. "I'm Ronan."

Gansey nods, tries to look like this is the sort of reaction people have all the time, says, "My name is Gansey." He remembers his nametag a second too late. It took a lot to get them to put his surname on the button pinned to his chest, which seemed completely absurd, and it didn't occur to him that the family name was no longer an asset until he was basking in the sort of small victory he'll have to get used to.

Ronan finally returns to removing items from his cart, although he seems more preoccupied with seeing how many boxes of cereal he can stack before the conveyor belt lurches to life and undoes his hard work. His record is three. After Gansey takes one of his battered building blocks, Ronan looks back at his groceries. "I'm spending the week at my brother's for Thanksgiving. Do you think this is enough for three people?"

Most of Gansey's customers ask questions he can't answer.  _What, exactly, is a sell-by date? D_ _o_ _y_ _o_ _u_ _think it's al_ _l_ _right that this can is dented? How long do raw potatoes last and should I refrigerate them?_  So it's nice to get a softball. He looks at the cart, still piled high. "I think this will be fine."

Ronan shrugs. "Declan made a list, but he's an asshole, so I left it in the car." He drops a few more things on the belt with a thud. "I drew the short straw."

Gansey tries to  _hmm_ sympathetically as he scans four pumpkin pies and seven cans of whipped cream. He's supposed to make small talk with customers, but none of his attempts have gone over well. The silence between him and Ronan feels particularly oppressive, and he casts around for something to break it. What comes out of his mouth, like a car crash, is, "This eggplant is such a vibrant purple."

Ronan stares, mouth very slightly agape. It's among the worst things that have ever happened to Gansey. It's worse than bankruptcy. It's almost as bad as dying. "Are you hitting on me, dude?"

"No!" Gansey says, so loudly that Ronan flinches back. It's slight but it's there, a display of vulnerability that Gansey wouldn't have expected, and he adds out of guilt, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." Ronan raises an eyebrow and hefts a frozen turkey onto the belt with enough force that the plastic splits. Gansey wrestles it into a bag, saying as he does, "I mean, I'm bisexual. But I'm also— a professional. And you're a customer."

"All right," Ronan says. It shouldn't be possible to be so obviously on the verge of laughter without even a hint of a smile. "Cool." Gansey wonders if this is what a heart attack feels like. He's never admitted to being bisexual before, but there's something very freeing about living on the margins of society. Ronan occupies himself by tapping at his phone, even though the screen is very clearly black. Gansey tries to focus on hunting down the code he needs. The book they gave him has a section for 'oranges,' and a separate section for 'citrus,' but somehow tangerines are under 'tropical.' If he still had his laminator, he would revamp the entire thing.

"So you aren't going to tell me more about my vibrant eggplants?" Ronan asks. 

"They like us to chat with customers. But nothing  _I've_ tried lands so." Gansey shrugs. "We talk produce."

Ronan rests one arm along the top of Gansey's screen, pushing it down several inches. "What have you tried?"

"You're going to laugh."

"Probably. But who cares?"

Gansey's caught between pointing out that  _he_  cares, desperately, and seizing the opportunity to talk to a receptive audience. He hadn't realized how much of his social success was dependent on what he had to offer. He'd known it was a factor, to be sure, but not such a major one. It's been a very ugly wake-up call to realize that what he was getting his entire life wasn't affection, or even respect, but deference. He makes himself smile, hoping to seem friendly and appealing. "What do you know about ancient Welsh kings?"

Ronan stares at the fluorescent lights overhead and lets out a long breath. "Jesus Christ. Yeah, okay, let's do this. What  _should_  I know about ancient Welsh kings?"

Gansey winces. "Well, you don't  _have_ to listen. I'm not ransoming your groceries or something."

Ronan looks at everything still in his cart. "No, we're going to be here for a while, and my phone's dead." As if on cue, his phone, which he's dropped on the belt along with his wallet, keys, and three loose mints, lights up with a text notification. Gansey cranes his neck slightly to read it. ( _Everyone else in the world can grocery shop in under three hours._ ) Ronan flips the phone face-down. "Might as well." 

It isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, and Gansey would like to have the self-respect necessary to stay silent. But he's lonely, and tired, and Ronan is cute, in a hoodlum sort of way. "When I was a kid, I almost died," he starts.

Ronan listens more or less patiently. He doesn't complain any of the times Gansey gets so absorbed in the story that he starts gesticulating instead of scanning. He even asks questions. Intense, arguably insensitive ones, like  _What did dying feel like?_ And  _You do all that on_ _what, like, five dollars an hour?_ Even with the occasional awkward moment,it's the most fun Gansey has had since he had to sell his spelunking gear. 

They're still two years from current on the story of the search when he gropes for the next item and grabs air. It's the first time he's ever felt too good at his job. They stare at each other. There's something to be said here, Gansey knows, something that will draw the moment out or end it productively. Instead, he reads the total aloud, and Ronan swipes his card. 

"I don't need the receipt," Ronan says, his voice unnaturally deep, but he reaches for it anyway, and in the awkwardness of the exchange, their hands brush against each other. Ronan pulls away quickly, nearly tearing the paper in half, and then he pushes his cart out the door without looking back.

Gansey planned to use his break to translate a poem written by one of Glendower's contemporaries—there's an official English translation, but he has his doubts about it. That's been his plan every day since he started, so he doesn't feel too bad about the half hour he spends eating ramen and wondering about the parts of Ronan's tattoo he couldn't see under his unseasonable shirt.

He's barely returned to his register when Ronan is back looking even slouchier and more attractive than he remembers. He's wearing a coat this time, a quilted black number that seems wildly out of character, but he works his way out of it and tosses it onto the belt, looking mutinous. "So," he says. He has several plastic bags, one of which is leaking viscous goo; Gansey can see from the state of the floor that it has been for a while. "Apparently, I'm supposed to demand an exchange because you put the eggs under a gallon of milk. You also double-charged us, like, a bunch of times." He holds up the bag, still dripping. There's something Gansey is meant to do about that, but he can't think of what. He sags slightly. It isn't that he doesn't believe in taking responsibility for his mistakes, but he isn't used to there being so many of them.

He can't say with confidence that he isn't supposed to know how to do returns, but is completely sure he doesn't. "If you take that to customer service—"

Ronan smiles then, in the pointed, cruel way Gansey is beginning to suspect he does everything. "Well, I'm not going to  _do_ it. He's not my fucking father." He doesn't offer any further commentary, but Gansey assumes that he's referring to the hated Declan, holder of a store club card. He glances around like he might have been followed and, when he's satisfied that they're unwatched, puts two cartons of eggs down with exaggerated care.  Then, apparently feeling that this lacks the emphatic quality he's looking for, he grabs every copy of Cosmo from the rack next to Gansey's belt and tosses them on, followed by the Men's Health display and then the Vogue one. He smirks at Gansey like they're co-conspirators and piles on every candy bar within reach. "He's going to  _freak_ when he sees his credit card statement. Do you want anything?" Gansey shakes his head. "All right." Ronan shrugs. His smile looks much nicer than it has any right to. "So, I hear you're famous." Gansey tries not to react. He has to recount the stack of magazines four times before he can hold the total in his mind. "I was telling my brother about your whole deal—"

"Declan," Gansey says, to indicate that he's a good listener, and to buy himself time.

" _No_. Declan's the asshole who dragged us all the way to fucking D.C. for Thanksgiving, and an eavesdropping douchebag. I was telling Matthew, my younger brother, and Declan recognized your name. I guess it was a big deal in the sort of boring circles he hangs out in."

"I wouldn't know. I no longer spend time in those circles." Gansey sounds defensive, even to himself, but Ronan just laughs, like the destruction of everything he's ever known is funny. It's sort of a sympathetic laugh, if there can be such a thing. Gansey gets the feeling that Ronan knows what it's like, even if he didn't flinch at a total north of five hundred dollars last time. He drove across the state to have Thanksgiving with only his two brothers, one of whom he seems to genuinely detest. 

"That sucks, man," Ronan says, not without feeling. Gansey finds himself unreasonably touched. No one else has expressed sympathy and really seemed to  _mean_ it. And maybe this isn't, say, a hand-pressed card with a bouquet of flowers, but at least it's sincere.

"It does suck," Gansey agrees. He spares a moment to look around for a supervisor or customer within earshot who might be offended by his use of profanity. He means to follow up with something cheery and positive, something like what he said constantly in the first weeks.  _Money isn't everything! We're going to fix this!_ But even Ronan's commiserating smile is sort of scowly, and it makes Gansey want to be honest. "It  _really_ sucks."

"I guess being poor sort of gets in the way of your whole—King Arthur quest, huh?" Ronan digs one of his three dozen packs of gum out of a bag and wrestles with the foil packaging. 

"No, actually." Gansey means this as a lie, a last desperate stab at dignity, but he realizes as he says it that it's true. He still has a car, one that's actually slightly more reliable than the Pig, if lacking in curbside appeal, and the fact that he hasn't been made full time means there's plenty of time left over for day trips. He promised himself when they went bankrupt that he wouldn't give up, wouldn't let it change him, and he realizes now that he has, that it has. Being circumscribed is not the same as being trapped. "I might not have the same resources I used to, but I do have some comparatively local leads. There's this town called Henrietta—"

Ronan drops the piece of gum he only just managed get free. "That's where I'm from."

Gansey laughs. He's missed this, the rush of discovery, the feeling of potential. "What a tremendous coincidence. The universe truly does provide, does she not?" The racks by his register are empty of all magazines, mints, and candy. Ronan is reaching for his card. It's do or die. He can continue wallowing in what he's lost, or he can figure out how to make a new life for himself in the wreckage of his old one. "I've been planning a trip down there; maybe you'd be interested in playing tour guide?" Ronan turns red, and Gansey realizes then that his interest could be taken as something other than platonic, or academic. He knows he ought to qualify—a native is always an asset in this kind of investigation—but he finds that he doesn't quite mind the assumption.

"Yeah," Ronan says, voice quiet and garbled by the leather band between his teeth. "Yeah, I guess I could— If you wanted to give me your number, that'd be okay." With self-consciousness writ large across his face, he finally looks properly his age. Spending time with his contemporaries has always left Gansey feeling impossibly old, and Ronan is no different—Gansey wants to drape him in a blanket and tell him that if he isn't careful, his face is going to get stuck like that. But there's something earnest about him, despite the absurd outfit and the slouchy, prowling sense of rage. 

Gansey recites his number and watches like a hawk as Ronan keys it in. He understands, suddenly, the urgency with which some people give theirs, although this is slightly more important than getting the sale price on store-brand pasta. He swallows down the urge to tell Ronan to text him immediately. He says instead, "It was very nice to meet you," and feels stupid even before the words are all the way out.

Ronan snorts and rolls his eyes, but Gansey sees him smile in the split second before he turns his back and walks away. The memory of that smile, the half-hidden one he wasn't meant to see, gets him through the rest of his shift with a minimum of despair, even when a woman calls him "weirdly smug for someone in the service sector" to whoever's on the other end of the phone she hasn't bothered to hang up.


End file.
